For me the answer for the ongoing debate of whether we are good, bad, both or neither lies in one thing. I believe that people have the potentials to be good and to be bad; it all needs a stimulus that triggers the good in you or the bad in you. We are born with a box of “tools” that are ready to be used whenever they are needed. Yes they are people who are more likely to be aggressive than others. However, the greatest dilemma is when the same person acts aggressively in times and empathizes at other times. This is basically because, this person’s self-esteem will be threatened .Accordingly, he/she would need to increase his/her cognitive dissonance to accept the fact that he/she wasn’t able to empathize in that situation and what’s even worse he/she acted aggressively . Therefore, if the person chose the strategies of justifying the behavior or creating a new cognition, he/she will more likely to repeat his /her aggressive behavior. Moreover, another possibility would be running in the viscous circle of self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, people that were hurt by that person’s aggressive behavior might judge him/her for being an aggressive person in general because they don’t realize the power of the situation on that person. Consequently, they’ll construe schemas for that person as being aggressive and will treat him/her accordingly. Therefore, it will backfire, and that person might start believing that he/she is actually an aggressive person and in fact he/she would become aggressive.
This person could be any of us. The Frustraton- Agression Theory relates to most of us especially in times like these, finals week. The amount of pressure that we are subjected to makes us feel so vulnerable. At these times we find ourselves less likely to help others, have a pro-social behavior. Unfortunately, we sometimes find ourselves not helping the closest of people who might be family or friend. That is to say, we might be even falsifying the concept of “kin selection.” Altruism barely exists in times like this. We are too concerned with the deadlines that we have to the extent that we might give an impression of being selfish. Simply because, you are always not available, you are in hurry and you are too consumed with what you to do. However, you’ll find an increasing trend of norm reciprocity, we sometimes stop to help our collegues that we find in trouble because w simply expect that this will increase the likelihood that they’ll help us back. Since we are somewhat in the same group “being AUC Students” we share the same environment and we tend to have empathy for each other as an ingroup members. I believe that our situation is well explained by the Urban Overload Hypothesis, we are too overwhelmed that we don’t even notice what we are missing out, we avoid any distractions cause we simply “have enough.”
The fact that I’m using my controlled thinking with some introspection I believe that it ill make a difference in the future as I’ll be aware of the stimulus and my behavior will make me be able to control my behavior in the future.
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